Volume 47 [2012–13]

Undercover Juggalo

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Undercover Juggalo

arts@sfbg.com

MUSIC When I pitched attending one of the Insane Clown Posse’s shows from its two-night stand at the Oakland Metro as an “undercover juggalo,” I felt the need to make it clear to my editor that I was not a fan. This would just be for a story and fun pics. I wanted documentation of the Detroit “horrorcore”-rap duo’s strange appearance in the Bay Area, but more importantly, of the fucked-up subculture and fan base that ICP has bred over the years.

Given the band’s notoriety for misogynistic lyrics, alleged violence at shows (plus the added element of the FBI’s 14-month investigation of juggalos as a potential gang threat); my perceptions of the band and its followers being a generally trashy bunch who boast bad music had me thinking, this could be my scariest assignment ever.

Going in drag was partly to protect myself. As a native Midwesterner (born and raised in Michigan) I thought I knew damn well what I was getting into. Elements of my past were about to come crashing into my present-day self and surroundings. My preconceived notions of juggalos, largely based on living in Michigan when the group found fame in the mid-to-late ’90s, were superficial and prejudiced, but not completely unfounded (grabbing the nearest trucker hat, donning ugly cargo pants, and putting on a pair of 10-year-old Nikes was totally the right thing to do). I thought hiding behind face paint would be an easy in for acceptance or at least a good cover.

I had important questions: What are Bay Area juggalos like? Why is this happening in Oakland? Would it really just be the Central Valley invading? Black juggalos?! WTF?! Does that even exist?

Beforehand a friend of mine agreed with my concerns and quipped it was going to be like entering some “ultimate societal vortex.” Others warned me to brush up on my juggalo lore as I wouldn’t want to be exposed as a poser. I did my homework, read a few good articles on The Gathering and watched a really sad YouTube video about a juggalette mom who calls in to a radio show to tell the story of her baby who died shortly after birth in the hospital. She uses that story to fulfill her obsession with scoring free ICP merch.

Reverse racist, white-trash poser

Nervous about walking the streets and getting on BART with my face painted, I still had to get from San Francisco to my destination. I wasn’t sure how people would react.

I was glad to have my friend and photographer, Dallis, along for the ride. Although he wouldn’t join me in wicked clown make-up, he did help me feel as if I wasn’t completely alone. He quizzed my knowledge on the topic at hand and casually dropped the term “white trash.” It’s not an epithet I like to use, but I agree there are worse. Unfortunately, this is the one assigned to the juggalo.

Just about everyone looks down upon and ostracizes them like they’re a symbol for what’s wrong with Middle America. I got some strange stares on the train, but that was about it. Once we popped through the tunnel and found our stop, some fellow “ninjas” (who looked like frat boys) noticed me. They asked if I had any more face paint. Unaware if they were legit fans or if this was mockery, I asked if they were going to the show. It turned out they were being un-ironic (I saw them later at the Metro), so I guess I was the poser.

Waiting in a long line wrapped around the building with “The Family” was the best part of the night. Finally, I had power in numbers (though not all juggalos wear the paint). It was familiar to me, not just because of Midwest roots, but because of fanaticism over a music act. Their energy was electric. They wanted to see their heroes, Shaggy 2 Dope and Violent J perform. That’s when it clicked. This was all about inclusion.

We couldn’t get over how nice everyone was. At one point Dallis was trying to get a picture, but was tapped on the shoulder by a juggalo who told him to get closer for a better angle. It was uncharacteristic of the pretense among the crowd at a typical Bay Area show.

Sure, my jaw dropped when I finally deciphered that one of the opening act’s lyrics that I was bopping my head to was, “dead girls don’t say no,” but why is it that I give fellow Detroiter DJ Assault a pass when I laugh hysterically at his raunchy sampled lyrics like “suck my mutha-fucking dick,” or consider “Ass ‘n Titties” to be anthemic? Am I a reverse racist, or is it simply taste in music and the understanding that you don’t have to believe in the lyrics or take them to heart, kill people with a hatchet, etc.?

Shock value and entertainment are nothing new here. Witnessing the unrelenting Faygo shower (Faygo “pop” is from Michigan and comes in a variety of weird flavors) is like being a kid on the Fourth of July watching fireworks. Scary clowns dressed in glittered gowns dance on stage and shake two-liter bottles, letting the candy-scented foam spray onto the audience as it shimmers in the light, and it is a true spectacle. The takeaway: juggalos are the salt of the Earth.

One ringy-dingy

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One ringy-dingy

marke@sfbg.com

STAGE “Oh, Ernestine has plenty to say about the current phone-surveillance thing,” the irrepressible Lily Tomlin told me, referencing her famous “one ringy-dingy” phone operator character and the recent NSA spying revelations. (Tomlin was driving down an LA freeway on her way to do some errands, popping in and out of coverage on her hands-free.)

In fact, another classic phrase from Ernestine, who’s been snooping on calls since Tomlin’s 1970s days on Martin and Rowan’s Laugh-In, rather appropriately sums up the civilian surveillance clusterbuck: “Have I reached the party to whom I am speaking?”

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=k9e3dTOJi0o

“Back during the whole Bush wiretapping time, Ernestine became an emblem for political cartoonists,” Tomlin continues. “But her association with government shenanigans goes back through Iran-Contra, all the way to Nixon and Watergate. In fact, during Iran-Contra in the ’80s, I was performing at the Emmys — I was up for one that year — and I called up G. Gordon Liddy to do a skit with Ernestine. He was going to play Oliver North! And I would be eavesdropping on him. He agreed, but then I backed off because I thought I was making too much light of the whole thing.”

The rogue’s gallery in the above paragraph gives some indication of Tomlin’s longevity in the biz, as well as her necessity. “I’ve been performing since I could basically walk,” she says. “When I was growing up in Detroit, I used to hang a blanket as a curtain on my back porch and put on shows for my family and neighbors. And then, because it started to get dangerous on the streets, I immersed myself in afterschool arts programs. I started incorporating film in to my performances, as well as comedy, drama, a little of this and a whole lot of that. I think I was the original performance artist!”   

Along with Ernestine, Tomlin’s essential characters like Edith Ann, Mrs. Beaszley, Sister Boogie Woman — maybe even her characters from 9 to 5 and Big Business, please? — will be in tow for “An Evening of Classic Lily Tomlin” worth trekking up to Napa to catch. The show, a version of which Tomlin performs 30-50 times a year, is a a kind of constantly evolving greatest hits extravaganza. “These characters never leave me; I’m constantly playing with them in my head, like some weird kind of checkerboard,” Tomlin said with a laugh. “But they have to say something, something relevant. Somehow, of course, it always seems like there’s something for them to say, especially lately.”

Now 73, Tomlin’s coming off a season on TV as the pot-happy hillbilly grandma from Reba McEntire’s sitcom Malibu Country and the Tina Fey movie Admission. She’s also a regular as Lisa Kudrow’s mother on web series Web Therapy, an avid social media user, and a crusader for several causes. “Darn good genes,” she says when I gasp at her energy, roughly 1000 times any other human’s. “I had an aunt just pass away at 91. Marke, she would have lived to 120 if the smoker’s emphysema hadn’t slowed her down.”

And her maverick feminist spirit still shines bright. “There’s more opportunity for women in this business now than when I started out. Working with Tina and Lisa was inspirational, and now with new media, the possibilities are really opening up. I mean, people used to think women did comedy only because they were too ugly to do anything else. When I first started getting better known, I can’t tell you how many people came up to me saying, ‘Oh, Lily, you’re so much prettier than you are on television!’ Ha. Can you believe that?”

“AN EVENING OF CLASSIC LILY TOMLIN”

Doors 7pm, show 8pm, $70-$85

The Uptown

1350 Third St., Napa

(707) 259-0123

Father’s day

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Father’s day

arts@sfbg.com

LIT In late-1980s San Francisco, Steve Abbott hosted a gay writer’s workshop at his small apartment at the fabled corner of Haight and Ashbury. One fleeting but reliable occurrence was an appearance by Alysia, the daughter he’d raised since his wife died in a car accident years earlier.

Each week, the teenager stormed about just long enough so we could feel her wrath before slamming the bedroom door. It was funny, but also understandable: at that age, who wants their personal space regularly invaded by strangers? Let alone gay male adults, reinforcing your separation from the heterosexual family norm?

Steve was a significant presence in SF’s literary scene for nearly two decades, publishing his own adventuresome small-press books in various idioms (poems, essays, fiction). He edited small magazines including the influential Poetry Flash; was first to promote such edgy “postmodernist” voices as Kathy Acker and Dennis Cooper; and was an idiosyncratic cultural commentator for local weeklies (including the Bay Guardian). He was unfailingly generous with other fledgling writers, myself included.

He barely kept the rent paid via rote day jobs, while raising a child alone — an awkward match to the carefree gay community he joined upon moving to SF (and coming out) in 1974. As Alysia Abbott writes in her acclaimed new release Fairyland: A Memoir of My Father (W.W. Norton and Company, 352pp., $25.95), there were no role models then for gay single parents. Their very close but turbulent relationship amplified the clash between her often-peevish parental needs and his belated self-discovery in a sexual-artistic bohemia. They found balance as she found her own identity upon leaving for college. But then the AIDS epidemic swept both up in its devastation.

Abbott, now living in Boston with a husband and two children, answered questions in advance of two local appearances this week.

San Francisco Bay Guardian You had an unconventional childhood with an unconventional parent. Has that influenced your own parenting?

Alysia Abbott My father was raised in a strict Catholic household where family members rarely showed affection. He kept his feelings bottled up. By the time he had me, he wanted a completely different family experience, transparent and open. He often shared his romantic and professional woes, sometimes seeking my advice.

I absorbed a lot of my dad’s worry, and sometimes found myself in situations where I had to be more adult than I was ready to be. I want to be my true self with my children. But I also want to protect their innocence to some degree.

SFBG You’re frank about having been an “obnoxious” unhappy teenager. Are there things you or your father could have done differently? Was it a phase you just had to work through?

AA We were trying to create a life with a lot of setbacks, sharing a cramped one-bedroom in the Haight with little money or family help. My father was lonely, and trying to get sober just when I discovered drugs and alternative culture. We did our best under the circumstances. But as often as we clashed, there was a lot of love. This was a period we needed to go through.

SFBG Your father identified so strongly as a writer, but Fairyland doesn’t address how you became one yourself.

AA I’d always wanted to be a writer, or an artist. But after watching him struggle financially, I pursued steady-paycheck work in cushy corporate structures (which I now hate). I also didn’t know if I had his native talent, or could be as intellectually rigorous and pure. I always had our story to tell, but worried I wasn’t worthy of it. The idea of writing Fairyland and having it not meet my own expectations was unbearable. Now I realize perfectionism is the enemy of creativity. To succeed, you have to be willing to fail.

SFBG When Steve was facing mortality, he wrote that you’d probably better appreciate his writing after he’d passed on. What do you think about his literary legacy now?

AA I’m embarrassed to admit I really didn’t read my father’s books until ten years after he died. During his lifetime, the work’s weirdness, its attraction to transgressive figures and ideas threatened me. I accused him of not being a “real writer” because no one had heard of him and he didn’t make any “real money.” What a terrible thing for a daughter to say!

Researching for Fairyland, I came to respect his contributions and integrity. All the writers I know today have to be such master self-promoters. My father was almost embarrassingly naïve in this regard. That may be why few people know his work today. But he was so devoted to writing, and supporting writers that impressed him, even if that effort did nothing for his own career.

I now really love several of his poems and books, especially Lives of the Poets — but some still make me uncomfortable. I’m not sure if it’s because they aren’t good, or still too “out there” for me.

SFBG After so many years, how do you feel about returning to SF? Many of your father’s creative generation are dead. It’s a much yuppie-er burg.

AA San Francisco is very different from the city I knew in 1974, or even 1994. I’ve worried that those who remember the old San Francisco, or appreciate its history, are dwindling — they’ve died or been forced out by Ellis laws. But new residents are attracted by the city’s beauty just as we were. And though much better-heeled, these tech workers and professional types are also trying to reinvent culture, if with much greater odds of profit — and interest in profit.

ALYSIA ABBOTT

Wed/19, 7pm, free

City Lights Books

261 Columbus, SF

www.citylights.com

 

Thu/20, 6:30pm, free

San Francisco Public Library

100 Larkin, SF

www.sfpl.org

Console prizes

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Console prizes

arts@sfbg.com

GAMER The days of game consoles being all about pretty graphics are over. The leap in visual fidelity when we went from PlayStation 2 to PlayStation 3 isn’t going to happen this time, which is one reason it’s been seven years since the current consoles have been refreshed. All that changes this year, with the impending release of the Xbox One and the PlayStation 4.

Microsoft had a false start last month, with the reveal of Xbox One occurring ahead of the Electronic Entertainment Expo, better known as E3. Showing off the sleek new console, the One was positioned as a unifying “everything” box, addressing the many Xbox users who regard the system as a gateway to all things movies, TV, and Netflix. However, by ignoring games and being cagey on important issues of DRM (a type of copy protection that has caused much past furor) and positioning the console as a high-speed always-online device, Microsoft willfully alienated a chunk of its audience.

The Xbox conference in Los Angeles last week saw the company hoping to gain ground by backing off its usual focus on sports, Kinect, and kids games and keeping true to “core game” experiences. In this regard, Microsoft was smart to tempt the Metal Gear Solid franchise to launch simultaneously on Xbox for the first time, and likewise big-time Sony-only developer Insomniac Games announced the One-exclusive Sunset Overdrive. Other Xbox-only experiences included Titanfall from the newly formed Respawn Games, which has the chops to be as big as the team’s last huge success — Call of Duty: Modern Warfare. And of course, more Halo is ever imminent.

Initially, Sony’s E3 conference appeared less cohesive, and quite a bit sloppier, than the Xbox conference as it proclaimed a new life for its struggling Vita handheld, but failed to follow its passionate declaration for the console with big game announcements. The company chose instead to revisit previously announced PS4 games, Killzone: Shadow Fall and Infamous: Second Son.

But Sony’s presentation deficiencies were quickly forgotten as the show drew to a close. Directly addressing complaints about Microsoft’s next-gen policies, Sony loosed a salvo of not so subtle digs against Xbox One, announcing the PS4 to be DRM-free and offline-friendly — not to mention the PS4 at $399 would cost $100 less than the One. Such brazen acts of competition are rare between these two, but Sony apparently found the cracks in Microsoft’s strategy too tempting to ignore.

Since the 2011 PlayStation network hack that left many users’ personal data at risk, Sony has performed the humble, pro-consumer act well and, even if it doesn’t always offer a superior console experience, it knows its audience. For once, it didn’t matter who had the better games, the bigger hard drive or the best specs. This E3 was all about attitude.

 

THE BEST FOR ‘LAST’

As we wave goodbye to the consoles that have kept us warm for the past seven years, gamers have been looking for a game to dub “the last great game of the generation.” Releasing amid all the hubbub of E3, The Last of Us (Naughty Dog/Sony; PS3) is a fitting final hurrah, capping the reign of the PS3 with not so much a bang but with an assurance and a confidence that are unfamiliar to the medium of video games.

Set a number of years after a worldwide infection has destabilized the country, The Last of Us follows Joel, a no-nonsense smuggler, as he attempts to transport a 14-year-old girl named Ellie out of Boston. From the developers behind the Uncharted series, one might expect big action set-pieces and witty banter, but The Last of Us is more true to the conceits of survival horror. At heart, this is a stealth adventure, until the odds invariably and adamantly force your hand into acts of ferocious brutality. There are bad people, bad monsters, and a whole lot of riveting moments — which I won’t spoil — but it’s not so much the story as how it is told. Despite its gloom, The Last of Us has sweetness and a sense of hope that shapes the characters and makes their journey all the more impactful.

In other words, The Last of Us is the game to beat in 2013.

More to grow on

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More to grow on

Pit Stop (Yen Tan, US) One of the very best narrative features at Sundance this year, Yen Tan’s drama nonetheless completely flew under the radar of media attention. It’s a beautifully low-key tale of two 40-ish gay men in a Texas small town. Neither are closeted, but they aren’t exactly fulfilled, either, both being in awkward domestic situations. Gabe (Bill Heck) is still living with angry ex-wife Shannon (Amy Seimetz) for the sake of their six year-old daughter. Ernesto (Marcus DeAnda) still shares his apartment with younger, slackerish ex-BF Luis (Alfredo Maduro), who keeps dragging his feet about actually moving out. Everyone is dissatisfied, but not quite willing to risk making a leap into unfamiliar territory. We know Gabe and Ernesto are fated to meet, yet it’s Tan’s terrifically nuanced portrayal of the relationships they must exit first that dominates almost the entire feature. Pit Stop is the kind of slow burner that sneaks up on you, surprising with the force of well-earned climactic joy after so much concise observation of credibly ordinary, troubled lives. Fri/21, 4pm, Castro; June 27, 7pm, Elmwood. (Dennis Harvey)

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0rhaXvoGf0s

Free Fall (Stephan Lacant, Germany) A young German police cadet, Marc (Hanno Koffler), finds himself disturbingly drawn to a fellow cadet, Kay (Max Riemelt), during a weekend of training exercises — a regimen that proves to be not quite enough of an outlet to diffuse the erotic tension between them. Back home, though, are Marc’s very pregnant girlfriend, Bettina (Katharina Schüttler), and a circle of friends and family who expect him to continue along his current track of shacking up, forming a family, and demonstrating his loyalty to the macho brotherhood of his colleagues on the force. When Kay transfers into the department, his presence exerts a pressure on Marc that threatens to derail him. Director Stephan Lacant’s film, co-written with Karsten Dahlem, movingly depicts the painful breakdown of a man ruled by impulses he’s unable to face up to, and the consequences that come of remaining paralyzed in an impossible state. Fri/21, 6:30pm, Castro; Mon/24, 9:30pm, Elmwood. (Lynn Rapoport)

C.O.G. (Kyle Patrick Alvarez, US) The first feature adapted from David Sedaris’ writing, Kyle Patrick Alvarez’s film captures his acerbic autobiographical comedy while eventually revealing the misfit pain hidden behind that wit. Tightly wound David (Jonathan Groff), on the run from problematic family relations and his sexual identity, takes the bus from East Coast grad school to rural Oregon — his uninhibited fellow passengers providing the first of many mortifications here en route. Having decided that seasonal work as an apple picker will somehow be liberating, he’s viewed with suspicion by mostly Mexican co-workers and his crabby boss (Dean Stockwell). More fateful kinda-sorta friendships are forged with a sexy forklift operator (Corey Stoll) and a born-again war vet (Denis O’Hare). Under the latter’s volatile tutelage, David briefly becomes a C.O.G. — meaning “child of God.” Balancing the caustic, absurd, and bittersweet, gradually making us care about an amusingly dislikable, prickly protagonist, this is a refreshingly offbeat narrative that pulls off a lot of tricky, ambivalent mood shifts. Sat/22, 9:15pm, Castro. (Harvey)

Bwakaw (Jun Robles Lana, Philippines, 2012) Grumpy old man in the rural Philippines — OK, Jun Robles Lana’s seriocomedy isn’t going to top many lists as the sexiest movie at Frameline. But it’s one of the most deeply satisfying films at this year’s festival. Six-decade Filipino cinema veteran Eddie Garcia plays Rene, a crusty loner who lives alone and works without pay (he’s officially retired) at the local post office just to have something to do. He has cranky relationships — “friendships” would be a stretch — with the area priest, a widowed neighbor, and two over-the-top queens who run a hair salon. His closest bonds are to a rest-home denizen now too senile to remember who he is, and to the stray mutt who’s sort of his dog — though not so much that he’ll actually let it in the house. After decades in denial, Rene finally accepted his homosexuality at age 60, when “my time was [already] passed.” But he gets an unanticipated new surge of hope, possibly misdirected, upon befriending rough-hewn younger bicycle-taxi driver Sol (Rez Cortez). With its leisurely pace and seemingly stereotypical characters who turn out to be much more complex than they initially appear, Bwakaw is a disarmingly modest movie that gradually reveals a rather beautiful soul. Sun/23, 5:45pm, Victoria. (Harvey)

The Out List (Timothy Greenfield-Sanders, US) Documentarian Timothy Greenfield-Sanders, whose previous projects have focused on prominent African Americans and Latinos, supermodels, and porn stars, turns his lens on the LGBTs for a survey film set to air on HBO this month. While there’s no sign of the radical faeries or the poly queers with negative interest in the marriage equality battle, Greenfield-Sanders has gathered a decently varied collection of 16 LGBT individuals, mostly but not only celebrities, whose common thread is having gone public. Milk screenwriter Dustin Lance Black and ex-NFLer Wade Davis describe their time in the closet and their coming-out episodes, while Hollywood stars Neil Patrick Harris and Cynthia Nixon comment on strategies for getting work and fighting the good fight (which for the latter includes closeting her bisexuality). Only an hour long, The Out List merely skims the surface of its subjects’ experiences, but we do get some sense of their scope, which includes finding family in NYC’s ballroom scene, getting elected as a lesbian Democratic sheriff in Dallas County, Texas, and learning to view one’s orientation as a gift from god. Tue/25, 4:30pm, Castro. (Rapoport)

Beyond the Walls (David Lambert, Belgium/Canada/France, 2012) Aptly compared in the Frameline catalog to such intelligent recent gay relationship studies as Weekend (2011) and Keep the Lights On (2012), David Lambert’s finely crafted debut feature charts its protagonists through an unpredictable, rocky romance. Paolo (Matila Malliarakis) is living with an older woman when he meets bartender-musician Ilir (Guillaume Gouix), who’s amused by the young blonde’s drunken antics while wary of the mutual attraction between them. When immature, puppyish Paolo gets thrown out by his exasperated girlfriend, he lands on Ilir’s doorstep as an uninvited instant-boyfriend, and despite some initial grumbling, that’s pretty much how it works out. Yet an unfortunate turn of events forces a long, involuntary separation between the two that their coupledom might not survive. While it requires a certain suspension of disbelief that focused, self-confident Ilir would fall for the flighty, needy Paolo, the eventual complexity of their relationship makes for a powerful cumulative impact. June 27, 9:30pm, Castro. (Harvey)

Reaching for the Moon (Bruno Barreto, Brazil) Brazilian director Bruno Barreto (1997’s Four Days in September) offers a moving account of the romantic relationship between the American poet Elizabeth Bishop (Miranda Otto) and the Brazilian architect Lota de Macedo Soares (Glória Pires), which spanned the 1950s and the better part of the ’60s. The pair meet under inauspicious circumstances: traveling to Brazil, Elizabeth visits her old Vassar friend Mary (Tracy Middendorf) at the gorgeous rural estate where she lives with Lota, a wealthy woman from one of Brazil’s prominent political families. Unfortunately for Mary, Lota’s regard for the timid, restrained Elizabeth moves along a precipitous arc from irritation to infatuation, her subsequent impetuous pursuit of her lover’s friend revealing a heartless egoism — as well as an attitude toward householding that blends a poly sensibility with a ruling-class sense of entitlement. The film tracks Elizabeth and Lota’s enduring affair during a period marked by professional triumphs, personal lows, and political turmoil, all of which take their toll on the relationship. June 28, 6:45pm, Castro. (Rapoport)

Out Here: A Queer Farmer Film Project (Jonah Mossberg, US) Jonah Mossberg’s documentary crosses the country seeking out the perspectives of LGBT farmers, visiting some 30 farms before narrowing the focus to seven disparate subjects growing food in settings that range from a community garden in West Philadelphia to a farmstead in rural Alabama (or what one participant calls “the toenail of the Appalachians”). An allegiance to organics and other sustainable practices establishes some common ground. However, asked to encapsulate how queerness impacts her farming life, a woman raising crops and chickens in the Bronx’s Garden of Happiness observes, “I don’t think the land asks that question — if you’re gay or straight,” while others tease queerness out of acts like turning to permaculture and draw connections between heteronormativity and industrial agriculture. Look for fermentation guru Sandor Katz at Tennessee’s Little Short Mountain Farm, and stay seated for the longish closing credits interspersed with earnest (and otherwise) discussions of which veggie wins the title of queerest piece of produce. June 29, 1:30pm, Victoria. (Rapoport)

Young and Wild (Marialy Rivas, 2012) Structured around the anonymous and oft-graphic blog posts of a Chilean teenager, director-cowriter Marialy Rivas’s inventive, engaging film depicts a young woman’s navigation — both solitary and very, very public — of her sexual and romantic impulses as they clash with a rigid upbringing of spiritual indoctrination. Raised in an evangelical Christian household, Daniela (Alicia Rodríguez) bluntly documents, under the screen name Young and Wild, a period of upset and exploration during which she is outed as a fornicator and expelled from school, threatened by her hard-edged mother (Aline Küppenheim) with missionary exile, and faced with the sorrow of watching a beloved aunt (Ingrid Isensee) battle cancer. As Daniela begins a relationship with a young man (Felipe Pinto), begins a relationship with a young woman (María Gracia Omegna), and records the proceedings with a complicated mixture of comic insights, lyrical observations, and obscenities, her introspections play with the device of the straightforward voice-over—broadcast to untold numbers of unknown peers who avidly follow and comment on her adventures and misadventures. June 29, 8:30pm, Roxie. (Rapoport)

Frameline37 runs June 20-30 at the Castro Theatre, 429 Castro, SF; Roxie Theater, 3117 16th St, SF; Victoria Theatre, 2961 16th St, SF; and Rialto Cinemas Elmwood, 2966 College, Berk. For tickets (most shows $12) and complete schedule, visit www.frameline.org.

Lives less ordinary

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Lives less ordinary

arts@sfbg.com

FRAMELINE Each year Frameline’s program vividly reflects issues that of late have seemed most urgent in the LGBT community — for many years, for instance, there was an understandably overwhelming amount of films about AIDS. Most recently, the fights for gay marriage and trans rights have dominated many a dramatic and documentary selection.

It is sometimes nice, therefore, in the fray of pressing public debate and community activism to escape topicality and sink into the achievements and personalities of more distant queer-history eras. Several documentaries at Frameline37 offer just that, as they chronicle the lives and times of five extraordinary men (albeit one normally found in a dress and fright wig).

The most San Francisco-centric of them is Stephen Silha, Eric Slade, and Dawn Logsdon’s Big Joy: The Adventures of James Broughton, about “a golden secret of West Coast bohemia.” The late James Broughton was a poet, prankster, and experimental filmmaker who began making films in the late 1940s “to see what my dreams really looked like.” A significant figure in the pre-Beat San Francisco renaissance of avant-garde art, he won a prize at Cannes for 1953’s typically playful, hedonistic The Pleasure Garden, but declined the commercial directing career offered him — in fact he didn’t make another movie for 15 years, when free-love hymn The Bed became a counterculture smash.

Broughton married and had three children (including one with not-yet-famous local film critic Pauline Kael), but at age 61 found his soulmate in 26-year-old fellow director Joel Singer, thereafter devoting his life and work to celebrations of gay male sexuality. (Interviewed here, his ex-wife Susanna calls this turn of events “a very unwelcome incident from which I never recovered.”) The documentary provides a treasure trove of excerpts from a now little-seen body of cinematic work, as well as much archival footage of SF over the decades.

Bringing joy to a lot of people during his too-brief life was Glenn Milstead, the subject of Jeffrey Schwarz’s I Am Divine. A picked-on sissy fat kid, he blossomed upon discovering Baltimore’s gay underground — and starring in neighbor John Waters’ underground movies, made by and for the local “freak” scene they hung out in.

Yet even their early efforts found a following; when “Divine” appeared in SF to perform at one of the Cockettes’ midnight movie/theater happenings, he was greeted as a star. This was before his greatest roles for Waters, as the fearsome anti-heroines of Pink Flamingos (1972) and Female Trouble (1974), then the beleaguered hausfraus of Polyester (1981) and Hairspray (1988). Despite spending nearly his entire career in drag, he wanted to be thought of as a character actor, not a “transvestite” novelty. Sadly, he seemed on the verge of achieving that — having been signed to play an ongoing male role on Married … with Children — when he died of respiratory failure in 1988, at age 42.

A different kind of tragedy is chronicled in Clare Beaven and Nic Stacey’s British Codebreaker, about Alan Turing — perhaps the most brilliant mathematician of his era, who basically came up with the essential concept of the modern-day computer (in 1936!) He played a huge role in breaking the Nazi’s secret Enigma code, thus aiding an Allied victory. But instead of being treated as a national hero, he was convicted of “gross indecency” (i.e. gay sex) in 1952 and hounded by police until he committed suicide two years later. Half conventional documentary and half reenactment drama (with Ed Stoppard, playwright Tom’s son, as Turing), Codebreaker illustrates the cruel price even an upper-class genius could pay for his or her sexuality in the days before Gay Lib.

Two literary lions are remembered in the last of these historical bio-docs. Daniel Young’s Swiss Paul Bowles: The Cage Door is Always Open recalls the curious life of a successful American composer turned famous expat novelist. He and wife Jane Bowles moved to post-World War II Tangiers, where they entertained a parade of visiting artists — and, by all accounts, a succession of same-sex lovers. Clips from Bernardo Bertolucci’s underrated adaptation of Bowles’ literary masterwork The Sheltering Sky (1990) are here alongside input from acquaintances and observers including John Waters and Gore Vidal.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=INW6i6K1NmQ

The latter is the whole focus in Nicholas Wrathall’s Gore Vidal: The United States of Amnesia, and what could be better than that? Perhaps undervalued as a frequently very fine novelist because he was so prolific (and popular), he’s considered here primarily as a public intellectual — a term that seems positively antiquated in our climate of pundits and ranters — and fierce lifelong critic of American hypocrisy in all its forms, especially the political. He was a scold (or a “correctionist,” as he put it), albeit of the wittiest, most clear-headed and informed type. Among myriad highlights here are seeing him on TV reduce friend-rival Norman Mailer to sputtering fury, shred the insufferable right-wing toady William F. Buckley, and make poor Jerry Brown squirm under his effortless tongue-lashing.

Endlessly quotable (“We’ve had bad Presidents in the past but we’ve never had a goddam fool,” he said of George W. Bush), obstinately “out” from an early age if never very PC in his views (“Sex destroys relationships … I’m devoted to promiscuity”), Vidal is aptly appreciated here as “a thorn in the American Establishment, of which by birth he is a charter member.” There will never be anyone quite like him — but we sure could use some who are at least in the general ballpark. *

FRAMELINE37

June 20-30, various venues

www.frameline.org

Where to next?

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Where to next?

arts@sfbg.com

DANCE Ben Levy sure knows how to throw a party. For the 10th anniversary celebration of his LEVYdance company, he once again closed off SOMA alley Heron Street, where his studio is located, and hung balloons, speakers, and lights. He put up bars and set out soft sofas, and erected a large stage with a central pit full of pillows (for those who might prefer to recline). It was one of those rare San Francisco evenings with clear skies — and just the slightest of breezes — which made you glad you don’t live across any bridges.

But does Levy know to choreograph? You bet he does. A decade ago he burst onto the San Francisco dance scene with clarity of vision and skills to match, unheard-of in a dancer just barely out of college. But that’s exactly why this festive event lacked an essential ingredient.

Seeing the four works — one from 2002, two from 2004, and one from 2005 — put a damper on the evening. No amount of finessing and rethinking of repertoire can take the place of the risk and excitement involved when a choreographer steps into unknown territory. Looking back on a decade’s accomplishments may be gratifying, but more essential is giving an audience an inkling of where the artistic trajectory is going.

Grant Diffendaffer’s open-air stage, essentially an elevated square of walkways around an open center, necessitated some reconfigurations that diluted what sometimes felt like volcanic forces about to explode in Levy’s choreography. But it also allowed for increased intimacy, depending on where you sat.

Levy’s four dancers dove into the choreography with an impressive unity of purpose. They attacked complex interactions — often at top speed — with razor sharp timing. Seeing the dancers dressed in brilliant white against the riotous chaos of the graffiti covered brick walls suggested an unexpected symbiotic relationship between dance and murals.

pOrtal, the oldest piece on the program, still fascinated in the way Scott Marlowe, Yu Kondo Reigen, Paul Vickers, and Sarah Dianne Woods upset each other’s balances. They grabbed, yanked, and poked; flipped a partner; or pushed a knee against a belly. When a dancer leaned over a colleague’s knee, it would drop away beneath them. The idea seems to be avoiding stability at any cost — like living in the middle of a non-stop earthquake. What might look like violence or aggression in another case is delivered in such a matter-of-fact way that it becomes a self-contained image of one way of being.

Originally, If this small space, choreographed by Levy and Rachael Lincoln, was performed on a five-by-five lit square that set up limitations. Shifted to the open, the attention immediately shifted onto the internal forces that strained against the confines of Marlowe’s body. Performed magnificently by this beautiful dancer, If this small space might have him look up and push against invisible walls — but it was the small trembles, muscular contractions, currents, and mysterious somethings rolling through his torso that collapsed his knees. The effect indicated just how at the mercy of imprisoning forces this human being was. Perhaps the most touching moment came when Marlowe lifted one leg and it looked like it might try to float away from him.

The engaging Holding Pattern opened with Reigen’s stunningly performed solo, in which warring forces seemed to tear her body apart as Vickers and Woods traced a cautious circle around her. The trio engaged in a contentious give and take, part wrestling match, part karate engagement. For a while it looked like the two women were ganging up on Vickers, but then he gave as good as he got.

That Four Letter Word (apply your own definition) finds the quartet in every possible permutation of relationships between two men and two women. Some of it is quite funny — though I could have done without the balloon jokes — but here the spatial reconfigurations created too much distance. Four ran out of steam though it did showcase Vickers and Marlowe — super-articulate, elegant dancers — exquisitely mirroring each other.

The program also highlighted Levy’s excellent musical choices — many of them commissioned. Let’s hope he’ll soon have an opportunity to use some more.

You can’t see me

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You can’t see me

caitlin@sfbg.com

SURVEILLANCE It’s all a mess: the government is suddenly (to those of us waking from our Twinkie nap) spying on us. Mulder and Scully were right, trust is for the foolish and undisturbed sleep is for the ignorant.

All the more reason to go out. Authoritarian regime is no excuse for poor style, says New York high tech fashion designer Adam Harvey. And armed with his projects, drone-defeating tactics can look damn good.

Even before Edward Snowden’s heroic leak of documents laid bare the NSA’s wide-ranging surveillance of American citizens, Harvey was busying himself merging privacy rights with fashion. Witness his LED-aided clutches that deflected the flash of cameras — the ultimate accessory for A-list independents (“Camoflash”, 2009).

But perhaps you are more of the sporty type? Harvey’s newest collection, “Stealth Wear” includes a half-hoodie that deflects thermal imaging surveillance. Heat-seeking systems won’t be able to see you, but that babe in the club sure will. His designs have an anti-colonial gaze: two “Stealth Wear” garments take the form of burqa and hijab. He’s also developed “CV Dazzle”, a series of makeup looks that foil facial recognition software and “OFF Pocket”, a sleek envelope that blocks one’s cell phone from sending or receiving signals.

We caught up with him through an insecure email account.

SFBG “CV Dazzle”‘s look seems very of-the-moment when it comes to the avant-garde fashion you see in clubs. What’s the inspiration? 

Adam Harvey The first look, with the black-and-white makeup, developed from my fascination with the Boombox scene in London. I studied party photographs as well as tribal face painting, especially from Pacific Islands. What I found was that only one of these styles worked, club fashion. Tribal body decoration does more to enhance key facial features which make a face easier to detect. The bold, ambiguous looks of the club scene were more algorithmically resistant. From there, I worked with Pia Vivas, a hair stylist to create the first look. And then collaborated with DIS Magazine to create the second and third looks.

SFBG How have the recent NSA revelations informed your work? 

AH The news struck while my collaborator and I were planning production for the “OFF Pocket.” It’s the first time I’m taking an art project and turning it into a marketable product. A lot of my work in privacy arts is speculative and provocative, but I think some concepts can be even more provocative when they’re accessible to more people. What happens when countersurveillance goes mainstream? That’s a discussion we need to have because if the government doesn’t respect privacy, then I think we should have the right to countersurveillance.

SFBG Where is “OFF Pocket” at in the production process? Have you sent one to Edward Snowden? 

AH It’s very close. I’ve gone through a lot of prototyping and testing to ensure that the product works well. Once a phone is inside and the case is properly closed, you really can’t access any part of it. If I knew where Edward Snowden was, I would send him a thankful dozen.

 

The end of an era, but not of a legacy

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Tim Redmond has a big heart. He cares deeply about this city and he cared deeply about this newspaper. But last Thursday was Tim’s last day at the Bay Guardian, the place where he worked for the bulk of the past three decades. In typical fashion, he stuck to his principles to the end.

The Guardian is not as economically healthy as it once was, and 2013 has not been kind to the paper. Revenues are down and many issues lose money, a trend that threatens our mission if left unchecked. During the past month, Guardian management had been contemplating some painful but necessary changes that included layoffs. Tim participated in these discussions, but in the end he chose to resign rather than downsize a staff he loved like family.

I understand Tim’s decision, but believe it was shortsighted. During the past year and a half, the Guardian’s two sister papers — the San Francisco Examiner and SF Weekly — have undergone similar restructuring, which included layoffs. The goal was not to extract obscene profits — a mission I wouldn’t support even if it were still possible in 2013 — but rather to ensure both papers’ survival and recovery. It was an unpleasant process, and one that Tim could not abide.

But today, the Examiner and Weekly are both significantly healthier than they used to be. The Examiner is no longer the mouthpiece of right-wing buffoons, and in recent months has expanded its Peninsula coverage and enlarged its editorial staff. And the Weekly boasts significantly more new coverage, listings and advertising than it did just six months ago.

I want the Guardian’s future as a progressive voice to be similarly assured. So now, 32 years after selling my first freelance news article to the paper — a brief about BART’s effort to evict the Ashby Flea Market — I find myself replacing Tim as publisher. Longtime Managing Editor Marke Bieschke, aka Marke B., is filling his shoes as interim editor.

I know some Guardian readers assume that this means the end of progressive journalism in the paper. Please let me assure you that will not occur. I have spent the bulk of my career editing investigative newsweeklies and have no intention of going down in history as the guy who dumbed-down the Guardian.

The very night before Tim told me he was leaving, he presided over a packed forum on the topic of economic dislocation in San Francisco. At the height of a tech boom that has inflated rents and led to a wave of migration and evictions, it’s hard to imagine few other topics of greater importance. Tim and the Guardian have reported extensively on this issue in the year since the paper was acquired by the San Francisco Print Media Company. Of course, the Guardian was already writing about evictions long before Tim’s predecessor assigned me to write that 1981 article about the flea market.

Under Tim’s successor, that emphasis will not change.

 

‘Money is a tool’

Andrew Lam
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‘Money is a tool’

Jack Abramoff says “legalized bribery” is corrupting our political system, and as a lobbyist who went to prison for taking the practice of buying favors from Congress to obscene new depths, he should know. But if we’re relying on him to help reform that system, a cause he’s now taken up, we could be in real trouble.

Watching Abramoff address “public ethics” at a University of San Francisco class of aspiring political professionals on June 6 was a little surreal. Part charming rogue, part penitent reformer, Abramoff told inside tales of how easily money corrupts even well-intended people who work in Congress.

“I didn’t create a new way of lobbying, I just did more of it,” Abramoff told the students, noting that while some lobbyists had a few good tickets to Washington Redskins or Wizards games to give away to members of Congress, he had 72 of them. And while some lobbyists would take members golfing, “I would put them on a Gulfstream and fly them to Scotland. What’s the difference? It’s still playing golf.”

It was particularly strange for someone of Abramoff’s obviously questionable moral fiber to be addressing political students at this Jesuit-run academic institution, whose local advertising slogans include “How to succeed in business and still go to heaven” and “Wicked smart without the wicked part.”

Yet forgiveness is supposed to be divine, and the instructor who lured Abramoff to speak with his class, local lobbyist and political consultant Alex Clemens, was certainly pleased to attract someone with Abramoff’s inside knowledge, avoiding Abramoff’s usual speaking fees of up to $20,000 by piggybacking on a Southern California speech he gave and paying only his airfare.

I was a bit more skeptical of a guy who equates political donations with bribery while hawking a book and narrow reform proposal — while at the same time soliciting corporate lobbying clients and telling the San Francisco Chronicle that Silicon Valley should be spending far more money to influence politicians.

“It needs a much bigger view of political involvement,” Abramoff told the Chron. “It should be spending much more. They’re not playing as smart as they should, and they could lose big.”

That’s part of the muddle of contradictions that defines Abramoff and his advocacy today, which is consistent with the anti-government, wealth-worshipping conservatism he has pushed with missionary zeal since his college days, along with pals Ralph Reed and Grover Norquist, who still play key roles in keeping religious fundamentalists and the rich in the Republican Party fold.

“I’m not against money in the system, I’m against money being used the wrong way in the system,” Abramoff told me after the talk, as I probed the contradictions in his statements and views. My efforts to pin him down caused him to scornfully brand me a “socialist,” the old bully replacing the affable face he showed the students.

“Money is a tool,” Abramoff told me.

Abramoff is also a tool, I decided as I listened to him, although it’s still tough to discern who is wielding him now and where this effort may be headed.

LESSON FOR STUDENTS

Abramoff told the students that even after he got busted in 2005, for a long time he indignantly wondered why he was being prosecuted for the same sorts of actions that were endemic to Washington DC. Eventually, he began to realize he had done something wrong.

“I thought maybe some of this [the charges against him] is right,” he said. “I decided to be honest with myself. Am I the saint I always thought I’d been, or the devil they said I was?”

Yet in the end, Abramoff never did really rethink his own worldview and history — from his early days of shilling for the South African government against efforts to end apartheid to later bribing members of Congress to oppose regulation of sweatshops and sex trafficking in US territories — he just blamed the political system.

“I thought this system is maybe not right,” he told students studying to be a part of that system. “I thought when I got out, I should probably try to help.”

So he wrote a book, Capitol Punishment: The Hard Truth About Corruption From America’s Most Notorious Lobbyist, and he says that he’s been developing political reform legislation that he intends to start pushing next year along with unnamed others.

Abramoff has consulted with Harvard Law School professor Lawrence Lessig, who founded Rootstrikers to push political reforms, but Abramoff doesn’t support many of the central tenets of that and other reform groups, including public financing of elections and overturning “corporate personhood” court rulings that deem political spending by the rich to be a free speech right.

In fact, Abramoff is still a right-winger who shows little interest in limiting the ability of wealthy corporations and individuals to freely spend their money on political candidates and issues, placing him at odds with pretty much the entire political reform movement.

Phillip Ung, a spokesperson for Common Cause — which has been working on these political reform efforts for decades — was a little skeptical about getting help from someone who once embodied the most corrupt and excessive aspects of the current system.

“As much as we enjoy his newfound support for political reform, we also understand that he has a debt to pay, and not just to society,” Ung said of the $44 million in restitution that Abramoff still owes to his victims.

Ung said that a stark example of political corruption like Abramoff represents does help the cause, but that has little to do with his current advocacy. “The reform flag at the federal level goes almost nowhere if there’s not a political scandal,” Ung said, although even that isn’t saying much because, “Congress and DC only have tolerance for political reform one every 10 years or so.”

With Democrats now overwhelmingly controlling California’s Legislature and executive offices, Ung sees opportunities for important reforms here. The most promising is Senate Bill 27, which would require political groups that raise more than $500,000 to disclose their donors.

By contrast, Abramoff’s proposal seems tepid at best, and his strategy for selling it relies on using political spending to elect sympathetic people to Congress, which would seem to undermine his reform message almost as much as pitches to corporate clients to hire him for lobbying consulting services (see www.abramoff.com).

“He seems to be going back to his old ways,” Ung said of Abramoff.

Abramoff said his legislation would broaden the definition of lobbyist, limit their campaign contributions to $500 per election cycle, and prevent public officials from working as lobbyists for 10 years after they leave government.

Then Abramoff said that he and his unspecified “we” will dump money into six contested Congressional races in 2014, trying to elect three Democrats and three Republicans who pledge to support his legislation, following that up in 2016 by targeting 25 to 50 races.

“Then and only then will Congress take it seriously,” Abramoff concluded, arguing that politicians respond to losing their jobs more than other means of persuasion. He’s going to use aggressive political spending to win the reforms he seeks, which don’t really do anything to limit political spending.

When I asked Abramoff how increased political spending can reform a political system corrupted by money, he replied, “You play with the tools and the battlefield you’re on.”

THE SYSTEM, OR ITS SPONSORS?

Abramoff blames Congress for corruption far more than the lobbyists or wealthy special interests who are doing the corrupting, noting how difficult it is to get political reforms approved by legislators who want to later cash in on their public service.

“The lobbyists are a response to the system set up by Congress,” he told the students, building on his earlier point that “99 percent of everything I did was legal, and that’s a bigger deal than the 1 percent that was illegal. That’s what has to change.”

But he acknowledges that reforming the system will be “impossibly difficult” because those who are invested in the current system will always find loopholes to any new regulation. “They’re extremely brilliant people and their goal is to get around things,” he said.

Omitted from Abramoff’s recitation of what’s wrong in Washington are the people doing the corrupting, that other 1 percent, the very rich. When I asked him about how he can really attack institutionalized political corruption without going after the cash that feeds that corruption, he told me, “I tend to be nervous about a political approach that says, ‘It’s the rich.”

Abramoff actually supports the Supreme Court’s controversial Citizens United ruling, which ended controls on the political spending of wealthy individuals and corporations, telling the students, “We all want certain corporations to have the rights that we individuals have.”

Abramoff also seems to dismiss the possibility of a grassroots political reform effort, saying that any change in the system would need support from both the left and the right, and the latter will kill any effort to actually removes private money from political campaigns.

“You’re not going to have federal financing of elections. The right will die before they let that happen,” Abramoff said.

That might have been the most insightful thing that Abramoff said to the students, although he certainly didn’t intend it the way that I heard it: maybe the right needs to die, in the political sense, before the system that Abramoff both decries and supports will change.

Polo in the park

Jesse Hawthorne Ficks
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Polo in the park

le.chicken.farmer@yahoo.com

IN THE GAME The lights at Jose Coronado Playground stay on until 10 p.m. Like most playgrounds, it has a life of its own: a heart, a brain, a bloated liver, and a basketball hoop. In fact: two — but most nights the basketball court is cut in half by an extension of the tennis court to create a bike polo court. Which is cut in half by the slightly grassy crack between tennis-top acrylic and just plain asphalt.

So you don’t always get a clean roll, but that’s life.

Also life: the ragtag collection of drunks and disorderlies congregating on the sidewalk near the 21st St. entrance to the courts most evenings. They bring chairs, or huddle around the trash bin there.

One of their number, long gray hair scare-crowing out from under his hat, saunters onto the empty half-court with a worn black basketball and starts shooting free throws. He’s wearing a suit jacket. After missing four straight from the line, he backs up to almost half court, heaves awkwardly from his rib cage, and finally sinks one.

Nobody cheers.

On the unbicycled part of the next-door tennis court, a couple of much younger folks, a pink-haired woman and a regular ol’ facial-haired man, are riding around in electric-wheelchair-based cardboard robots. They look like something from a sixth-grade science fair, modified boxes with marker-drawn robot features. One has corrugated heating ducts for arms, dangling down to the pavement.

“You go on ahead without me,” I say to Hedgehog.

Jose Coronado is smack between our favorite restaurant (Limon Rotisserie) and our favorite ice cream (Humphry Slocombe).

“Do you want me to bring you something?” she says.

“Your call,” says I. I eat ice cream, but it’s not my thing.

Nor are homemade robots. But I have to ask, so while Hedgehog is walking on to 24th and picking out our flavors, I manage to make my way into the driver’s seat for a test drive. There is a camera mounted high on the chain-link fence surrounding the playground, and you have to drive by video, which is transmitted to a pair of goggles.

It’s like playing a video game from inside the screen. You are the little thing that you’re looking at.

I don’t like video games.

Zipping around pretty much blindly, I get almost immediately dizzy and lost, and almost crash into some bikes.

They’re going to race these funny wheelchair robots next day at SubZERO, San Jose’s annual subcultural festival, and I wish them luck.

While I’m waiting for Hedgehog to get back with our ice cream, I watch a little bike polo on the other side of the tennis net. It’s a pretty intense pick-up scene. Three-on-three, with a basketball hoop and a light pole in the field of play.

Most of them wear helmets. Some, knee pads and elbow pads. They drink beer, they smoke. One girl is playing with a cigarette in her mouth.

Plastic mallets awhirl, they circle and sprint, skid, bounce, and sometimes fall. If your foot touches the ground, you have to touch one of the mid-court posts with your mallet before returning to play.

It looks goddamn fun.

Another woman scores her second goal of the game and a dude against the fence, waiting his team’s turn, hollers, “My nipples are hard!”

“I didn’t know he had nipples,” quips a guy on a bike, racing back to defend his goal.

On the hard-top soccer pitch other side of the fence from all this, a couple of moms are kicking around with their kids. I fantasize about joining them, but here comes Hedgehog with our ice cream: mango and carrot, and basil lime.

The basketball scarecrow has moved on, and now two short guys are playing one-on-one. Someone else is practicing his fancy dribbling in the shadows, and occasionally pulls up and bounces a shot off of a light pole.

Twenty Major League Baseball players face possible suspension for alleged use of performance enhancing drugs, and these moms, kids, kooks, and badasses are out here every time I walk by, which is often.

Between Shotwell and Harrison on 21st Street in the Mission. Jose Coronado Playground. This has been a night in the life. Of it.

Newcomer Nights are on Wednesdays, in case you’re interested in getting in the game, bike polowise.

Otherwise, it’s not a bad spectator sport. Mondays, Thursdays, and Saturdays they play, from seven to ten. Check it out.

www.sfbikepolo.com

 

Scorning smokers

Jesse Hawthorne Ficks
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Scorning smokers

news@sfbg.com

San Francisco officials are attempting to ban the public use of e-cigarettes under the same laws that restrict smoking cigarettes, which are banned in most public places purportedly because secondhand smoke endangers others. However, the alleged lack of toxic emissions from e-cigarette vapor raises questions about the basis for the crackdown.

Has the crusade against smoking in public really been about protecting the innocent, or is the moralistic motivation to try to save people from their own bad choices also driving the trend? And if so, does that undermine the legal basis for restricting an otherwise lawful product?

Since 2011, the San Francisco Department of Public Health has backed legislation to hold e-cigarettes under the same public smoking laws as traditional tobacco products. Currently, San Francisco’s continually expanding smoke-free ordinance bans cigarette consumption in nearly any public place. This consists of Muni stops, festivals, parks, farmers’ markets, non-smoking apartments and, unfortunately for all you nicotine-addicted bingo lovers, the obscure addition of “charity bingo games.”

San Francisco has yet to pass any regulatory laws regarding e-cigarette consumption, or “vaping.” But Nick Pagoulatos, a legislative aide to Sup. Eric Mar, a staunch sponsor of San Francisco’s many anti-smoking policies, says a plan is in the works.

“Currently there is nothing on the books,” Pagoulatos told the Bay Guardian. “But there has been discussion with the health department [which is] working something up and the Mayor’s Office has been talking with them as well. The timing is unclear, but at some point it will happen.”

California Senate Bill 648, approved in May and currently on its way to the California Assembly, would elevate similar e-cigarette regulations to a state level. So why are California and San Francisco pushing so hard to regulate these products?

“The suspicion is that allowing people to vape these things reinforces the culture of smoking,” Pagoulatos said. “It continues in the tradition of making smoking look cool, even if it’s not actual smoke.”

Traditionally, San Francisco’s smoking ordinances have derived from the hazards of secondhand smoke on innocent bystanders, but the regulation of e-cigarettes evokes an entirely new basis for public smoking laws.

California has an active history of anti-smoking legislation beginning in the 1990s when San Luis Obispo became the first city in the world to ban smoking in all public buildings. In 1998, the public smoking ban elevated to the state level, specifically because of the health risks posed to bar and restaurant employees by secondhand smoke. This year, the San Francisco Board of Supervisors voted to extend the already strict non-smoking laws to cover festivals and street fairs and require landlords to designate their building units as smoking or non-smoking. Now, vapers in California face a similar threat.

 

VAPING ISN’T SMOKING

E-cigarettes contain a battery operated heating device that vaporizes a combination of nicotine and a binding liquid such as propylene glycol, a substance “generally recognized as safe” by the FDA. Since nicotine is not what kills smokers, e-cigarettes have the potential to exist as a safe alternative for smokers who can feed both the physical and mental habit of smoking without the detrimental effects of tar and the plethora of other chemicals found in traditional cigarettes.

However, conflicting studies exist regarding the safety of e-cigarettes for both users and the public. While the FDA has yet to regulate e-cigarettes, a 2009 evaluation reported the finding of numerous chemicals in e-cigarette liquid, such as those found in antifreeze.

Gregory Conley, legislative director for The Consumer Advocates for Smoke-Free Alternatives Association, told us these reports are misleading.

“Essentially, there is absolutely no evidence that e-cigarette vapor poses any significant threat to public health,” said Conley. “The antifreeze chemical was found in one of the 18 cartridges and tested in an amount that was less than 1 percent. Additionally, the amount of the chemical diethylene glycol found by the FDA would take thousands of cartridges to reach a toxic level.”

Conley cites the publication Tobacco Control, a premier tobacco science journal in the US with no tobacco industry ties, as the leading evidence in the case for e-cigarettes. The study, funded by the National Institute of Health, tested 17 different brands of e-cigarettes for chemicals known to cause harm in secondhand smoke.

“These amounts were nearly identical to the amounts in the control product, or the FDA approved nicotine inhaler,” said Conley. “They are trace levels, and anyone who has been in a room with an e-cigarette knows that there is a vast difference in comparison to a normal cigarette.”

A study by the Fraunhofer Wilhelm-Klauditz-Institut in Braunschweig, Germany found similar results, reporting that the release of toxins from e-cigarettes were marginal to non-existent. In fact, researchers attributed many of the low level chemicals detected in the tests, such as formaldehyde and acetone, to the test subjects, since our lungs naturally exhale these chemicals in small amounts.

Conley says e-cigarettes not only provide a safe alternative, but also offer a public promotion of smoking cessation by illustrating the addicting effects of nicotine.

“It’s a walking advertisement to show how addictive cigarettes are,” Conley said. “The fact that you have to buy one of these things to quit smoking, with a battery and everything, it’s ridiculous.“

 

TARGETTING TOBACCO

Equating e-cigarettes and traditional cigarettes does tend to disregard the potential benefits safer nicotine alternatives can have on addicts. The language of the FDA and the DPH appears to dismiss the advantages of e-cigarettes over smoking. While issues certainly arise with the lack of regulation and quality control of e-cigarettes, much of the discussion from these groups pertains to reversing social views on smoking.

“The major concern for us is about social norms,” Derek Smith, a health program coordinator at the Tobacco Free Project, told us. “People get confused about the use of these products in public where they might think tobacco use is allowed. That’s one of the major concerns because there are limits to where people can safely smoke indoors. It’s the idea of a copycat item.”

According to Smith, AT&T Park, San Francisco General Hospital, and the San Francisco Airport Commission have all already banned the use of e-cigarettes on their premises. Some Bay Area cities, such as Petaluma, have already classified vaping under their smoking ordinances. In Canada, the sale of e-cigarettes is entirely prohibited due to a lack of regulation and quality control, while cigarettes remain legal.

FDA regulation could certainly alleviate much of the pressure e-cigarette companies face from the public. However, if a safe e-cigarette is proven to exist via an official FDA evaluation, organizations like the DPH may still not allow public vaping for the sake of remaining strictly against the use of tobacco related products in public places.

Many of the arguments against the use of e-cigarettes are seemingly arbitrary to the discussion of public use since San Francisco’s public policy holds so much blunt hostility toward anything tobacco related (but, of course, anything marijuana related is okay with the city). Oddly, e-cigarettes continue to get flack from the FDA, while other nicotine delivery systems such as patches and gum are FDA approved.

Under what legal grounds could San Francisco’s government have the right to ban e-cigarette usage in public places if they are proved harmless? If the legislation passes, residents of non-smoking apartments would be unable to legally vape a scentless, allegedly toxin free e-cigarette in the privacy of their own home.

 

FEDS AND E-CIGS

In March the FDA appointed Mitch Zeller as the new director of the Center for Tobacco Products. According to his FDA profile, Zeller, a lifelong proponent of FDA tobacco regulation, has deep-rooted ties to the anti-smoking movement and is currently an executive of a pharmaceutical consulting firm working closely with sellers of FDA approved, nicotine-replacement pharmaceuticals.

But Zeller has openly advocated the idea of harm reduction through nicotine-replacement systems, much more than his predecessor, Dr. Lawrence Deyton. So hope may yet exist for the plight of vapers who don’t want to be lumped in with smokers. So much of the anti-smoking conversation is drenched in black-and-white thinking, promoting a system of total abolition over harm reduction. Unfortunately for smokers, this could impede their transition to a safe nicotine delivery system that they can use virtually anywhere, and one that may consequently help save lives. As of now, public discourse and education may act as the most important catalyst toward a widespread understanding of e-cigarettes.

For anyone who has seen an e-cigarette, the soft glow of the LED light at the end has little resemblance to a traditional cigarette, which is on fire and emitting a cloud of noxious smoke. If an FDA approved, emission-free e-cigarette eventually hits the market, users in San Francisco could still face a loss of freedom solely backed by the ideological social standards of the anti-smoking movement, which would bar them from vaping in public. But for now, San Francisco’s vapers should enjoy their freedom while it lasts.

CORRECTION: This article was corrected to change the chemical name in Conley’s quote from propylene glycol and to clarify that the FDA studied the liquid in e-cigarettes, not their emissions. 

In his footsteps

Jesse Hawthorne Ficks
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In his footsteps

arts@sfbg.com

DANCE If you are even tangentially connected to San Francisco’s dance community, one name will pop up again and again: Ed Mock. He was part of San Francisco’s awakening as a center for arts on the edge before his death from an AIDS-related illness in 1986.

African American and gay, the performer-choreographer was, above all, a free spirit throughout the two decades he lived in SF. During that time, he influenced and shaped a generation of young artists. For dancers like Wayne Hazzard, Victoria Mata, Shakiri, Joanna Haigood, and Pearl Ubungen, he was crucial to who they became. Mock also collaborated with the young Rhodessa Jones; Ntozake Shange’s For Colored Girls Who Have Considered Suicide When the Rainbow Is Enuf… premiered in his studio.

One of the dancers whom Mock profoundly marked is Amara Tabor-Smith. To honor him, she created the multi-venue He Moved Swiftly But Gently Down the Not Too Crowded Street: Ed Mock and Other True Tales in a City That Once Was. The piece will wander through the city Sat/15 and June 21-23.

The SF-born Tabor-Smith encountered Mock when, at 14, she tagged along with a friend who had been told that classes with Mock were a must. She joined his Ed Mock Dance Company at 17 and stopped dancing for a year when he died. Eventually, she joined New York’s Urban Bush Women for a decade before returning to her much-changed hometown in 2006.

Talking with her after a rehearsal in early June, it quickly becomes clear that she not only mourns the passing of a pioneering artist but also a period when San Francisco was place for experimentation, openness, and a sense of the possible. The Beats and the hippies may have put their own stamp on the city, but in the 1970s the gay pride movement filled the air with champagne-like effervescence and expectations — until the AIDS epidemic cut it down. Lately, the tech boom has had a negative effect on SF’s artist population.

“Ed was the most fearless person I ever knew,” Tabor-Smith says, “He was the embodiment of freedom, courage, and mischief. I loved the way he embraced the risk of failure and the way he could create on the spot because the spirit moved him. He knew who he was and where he came from. He was an old soul, and he walked with the ancestors.”

Mock left his primary legacy through his classes, teaching wherever he could find studio space. Tabor-Smith remembers them as always packed with all sizes, colors, body shapes, and orientations — unusual for a time when teaching was much more compartmentalized than it is today.

He choreographed for his company, but as a dancer he improvised — a pioneering act in itself. Unfortunately, little documentation has survived. A YouTube search does turn up a video of Possum Slim, an astounding solo from 1979 performed by a naked and body-painted Mock.

Tabor-Smith (in collaboration with Ellen Sebastian Young) conceived of He Moved — part of Dancers’ Group ONSITE Series — as 11 site-specific performances that journey through Mock’s life. Among others, she is working with Jose Navarette on a section about memory; Jesse Hewitt and Laura Arrington will perform “acts of disruption” for Valencia Street’s 24/7 connected crowd.

Hayes Valley’s Salle Pianos and Events — where Tabor-Smith is rehearsing He Moved‘s “A Room of Black Men” section — happens to be next door to one of the studios in Mock’s peripatetic teaching career. She sees its funky elegance, with crystal chandeliers hanging over metal folding chairs, as “an Ed kind of place.” In stark contrast to the traffic roaring by on Market Street, the nine dancers bring a statuesque dignity and stillness to what is a tribute to black manhood. But they also explode into individual solos and help each other find community. At one point the dance becomes what looks like a ceremonial blessing around a seated elder, whose eloquence emanates simply from his presence.

Tabor-Smith also likes the Salle space because it’s located across the alley from Zuni Café, where her piece’s “Window Seat” section will be shown. Appropriately, “Ed was a fixture there. The people who ran it were wonderful. He never paid for a meal. Or a bottle of wine.” *

HE MOVED SWIFTLY BUT GENTLY DOWN THE NOT TOO CROWDED STREET: ED MOCK AND OTHER TRUE TALES IN A CITY THAT ONCE WAS…

Sat/15 and June 21-23, 3:30-8:30pm, free

Various locations (starts at 32 Page), SF

www.dancersgroup.org

 

The young master

Jesse Hawthorne Ficks
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The young master

cheryl@sfbg.com

FILM After a banner 2012 and early 2013 — in which his 1958 Vertigo was named the best film of all time by Sight and Sound magazine; a critically-panned but still entertaining-enough biopic hit theaters; and a months-long career retrospective, “The Shape of Suspense,” played the Pacific Film Archive — Alfred Hitchcock’s revival continues. Next up is “The Hitchcock 9,” a San Francisco Silent Film Festival showcase of nine silent films — nearly his entire 1920s output, all made before he turned 30.

His best-known films continue to inspire pop culture (see: A&E’s hit Bates Motel), but Hitchcock’s earliest work isn’t widely circulated. That may change thanks to the British Film Institute’s restoration efforts, the fruits of which are unspooling stateside on a multi-city tour (along with the Silent fest, co-presenters include the Brooklyn Academy of Music and the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences) launching at the Castro Theatre. Live music by acclaimed musicians will enhance each screening, including the five-piece Mont Alto Motion Picture Orchestra, Bay Area pianist-composer Judy Rosenberg, and British silent-film specialist Stephen Horne.

In movie-crazed San Francisco, where Silent fest screenings regularly sell out (this year’s event is July 18-21; start your engines, Louise Brooks fans), the only dilemma will be deciding which of the Hitchcock 9 to see. Opening night offers a tempting option in 1929’s Blackmail, which Hitchcock — always adventurous with filmmaking technology — shot as a silent/sound hybrid.

Her blonde hair hinting at what would become a Hitchcock trademark, saucer-eyed beauty Alice (Anny Ondra) steps out on her inattentive boyfriend, a Scotland Yard detective, with an artist whose intentions prove shockingly lascivious. Alice has no choice but to stab her attacker (and rip one of his creepy clown paintings) and skulk off into the night, leaving the murder scene for her cop beau to find. What happens next is given away by the film’s title, but no matter — Blackmail is suspenseful to the end.

Another fair-haired lass encounters menace in closing-night film The Lodger (1926), a thriller that takes its stylistic cues from German Expressionist films, particularly 1920’s The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari. Sassy model Daisy (June Tripp, credited as “Miss June”) declares “No more peroxide for yours truly!” when London’s headlines begin shrieking about a serial killer, “The Avenger,” who exclusively targets blondes. Enter a gloomy-yet-dreamy stranger (Ivor Novello), who takes a room at the boarding house run by Daisy’s parents; it doesn’t take long before he makes the landlady uneasy (he does wear a cape, after all), though Daisy finds him intriguing. Naturally, her boyfriend — another cop — becomes highly jealous, not to mention suspicious.

Blackmail and The Lodger are stuffed with elements that would later be easily identifiable as “Hitchcockian” (witness Blackmail‘s high-climbing climax — it ain’t Mount Rushmore, but you see where the idea’s heading). But The Ring, about a love triangle between two boxers and the (dark-haired) temptress that motivates their brawls, is Hitch’s only original script penned without collaborators, and it’s hardly chockablock with psychological terrors. It is, however, a charming sports romance with some nifty technical touches, including an early example of a drunken scene being shot in blurry “booze-o-vision.”

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=F2T4ZrBel6A

The rest of the Hitchcock 9: 1928’s daffy-heiress tale Champagne; 1927’s Downhill, which also stars The Lodger‘s Novello; 1927’s Isle of Man-set The Manxman; 1928 comedy The Farmer’s Wife, with The Ring‘s Hall-Davis; 1927 Noel Coward adaptation Easy Virtue; and Hitchcock’s feature debut, 1926’s The Pleasure Garden. 

THE HITCHCOCK 9

Fri/14-Sun/16, $15–<\d>$20 (nine-film pass, $135)

Castro Theatre

429 Castro, SF

www.silentfilm.org

 

Hell boys

Jesse Hawthorne Ficks
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1
Hell boys

cheryl@sfbg.com

FILM It’s a typical day in Los Angeles for Seth Rogen as This Is the End begins. Playing a version of himself, the comedian picks up longtime pal and frequent co-star Jay Baruchel at the airport. Since Jay hates LA, Seth welcomes him with weed and candy, but all good vibes fizzle when Rogen suggests hitting up a party at James Franco’s new mansion. Wait, ugh, Franco? And Jonah Hill will be there? Nooo!

Jay ain’t happy, but the revelry — chockablock with every Judd Apatow-blessed star in Hollywood, plus a few random inclusions (Rihanna?) — is great fun for the audience. And likewise for the actors: world, meet Michael Cera, naughty coke fiend.

But stranger things are afoot in This Is the End. First, there’s a giant earthquake and a strange blue light that sucks passers-by into the sky. Then a fiery pit yawns in front of Casa Franco, gobbling up just about everyone in the cast who isn’t on the poster. Dudes! Is this the worst party ever — or the apocalypse?

I chatted with Rogen, his co-director and co-writer Evan Goldberg, and co-star Craig Robinson (The Office) when they hit town a few weeks back; their Bay Area visit included stops at multiple social-media HQs (Rogen’s take: “I thought there’d be more Segways.”) Rogen and Goldberg’s often-overlapping, guffaw-laden answers speak to their lifelong friendship — at 13, the Vancouver classmates wrote the first version of what would become the 2007 hit Superbad.

Also in 2007, they made Jay and Seth vs. The Apocalypse, a short film starring Rogen and Baruchel as “two guys arguing in a room, basically,” Rogen says. “The world is ending, but our main problem is that we have to deal with each other, and our histories, and our friendship issues.” The idea expanded and became This Is the End, which marks Rogen and Goldberg’s feature directorial debut. An apocalypse comedy? Well, why not?

“There’s always been apocalyptic movies. It’s the biggest idea you can have: the end of everything. But are there any other funny ones?” Goldberg wonders. “I found moments of Volcano (1997) pretty funny. I suppose Armageddon (1998) would be classified as an apocalypse comedy, by accident.”

It’s important to note that This Is the End relies not on natural disasters, asteroids, aliens, or zombies to signal doomsday. “The whole concept was, full Christian apocalypse,” Rogen says.

“Catholic. Christian. Apocalypse. Book of Revelations. It’s the biggest book ever made,” Goldberg adds. “It’s the most popular version of it, so we might as well ride that gravy train.”

Cult-movie connoisseurs will be familiar with unintentionally hilarious depictions of the Rapture, most famously in “scare films” like 1972’s A Thief in the Night. Rogen’s research was slightly more modern. “Along with two of our producers, I watched all of Kirk Cameron’s Left Behind movies,” he admits. “They are fucking insane. It was one of those things where we were like, “Let’s look at it for five minutes. It’ll be funny!” and we ended up watching the whole trilogy. It was unbelievable.”

Neither Rogen nor Goldberg happens to be Christian, which is part of the joke. “A lot of people think we’re gonna be stuck here as hell comes to earth ’cause we’re Jewish,” Goldberg points out.

“It’s true!” Rogen laughs. “That idea fascinated us. Most people in North America were raised Christian; whether or not they actually believe in it, they’re ingrained from a very young age with the general idea that hell is gonna come to earth one day, and the good people will get sucked up to heaven and the bad people will be laid to waste, basically. Which to us was a fuckin’ disturbing concept, especially since it was implied that we would be the ones left behind. I think that’s really where [the film] came from.”

Goldberg elaborates. “In 11th grade, I had a conversation with a Christian friend, where I asked, ‘Let’s say I save a bus full of children who are falling off a bridge. But there’s this serial killer who believes in the stuff that gets you into heaven, and I don’t. Does he still go to heaven, and I go to hell?’ And she was like, ‘Yeah. Sorry, dude.’ Most Christians don’t really think we’re going to hell. But they all know the story.”

Of course, This Is the End has a lot more to it than religious commentary; there’s also copious drug use, masturbation gags, urine-drinking, bromance, insult comedy, and all of the uber-meta in-jokes fans of its stars will appreciate. (When asked if this is the most self-referential movie ever made, Goldberg cracks, “Maybe … unless, is somebody making a movie about the making of this movie?”)

“You’ve seen people play themselves in a movie before, but not to this level,” Robinson notes. “Though there’s two versions, you know — there’s me, singing ‘Take Your Panties Off,’ which I do in real life, and the me who has killed a man, which is not real. Hopefully the audience will able to differentiate.”

With a large ensemble of funny guys (Rogen, Robinson, Baruchel, Franco, Hill, and Danny McBride), plus a raft of cameos, the filmmakers were careful to split the laughs as evenly as possible.

“For the six main guys, we tried to write the best script we possibly could. But sometimes, the actors won [with their improv], because they’re funnier,” Goldberg laughs. “When it came to the party with all the different deaths and stuff, we had a bunch of ideas and we kind of hashed it out with each actor. We tried to make sure we gave everyone one good bit, and I think we mostly pulled it off.”

 

THIS IS THE END opens Wed/12 in Bay Area theaters.

Wish you weren’t here

Jesse Hawthorne Ficks
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2
Wish you weren’t here

arts@sfbg.com

FILM Austrian Ulrich Seidl has been making films since the early 1980s, but didn’t get much attention internationally until 2001’s Dog Days, a bleak and nasty ensemble piece about some seemingly ordinary — but all variably pathetic, ugly and/or perverse — Viennese suburbanites sweating through a heat wave. It was the sort of movie that demanded attention, being grotesque, funny, surprising, meticulously crafted, and arguably just plain mean.

Following decades of mostly documentary work, he’d suddenly joined the ranks of what you might call the New (though not necessarily young) Misanthropes: directors like his fellow countryman Michael Haneke, France’s Gaspar Noé, and the Philippines’ Brillante Mendoza. For some their invariably depressing, often upsetting films illuminate the human capacity for cruelty. For others, they wallow in it.

After taking his time making a Dog Days follow-up (2007’s Import/Export, a predictably grim comment on Europe’s immigration inundation), Seidl is back in atypical bulk with his Paradise Trilogy, three lightly interlocking (there’s no real overall arc) features more tightly focused on hapless individual protagonists. Each are observed — and this director is among the most ruthlessly clinical observers around, as if cinema were a laboratory and characters his test subjects — on vacation. But of course the experience of any earthly paradise is a sour joke in the contexts they find themselves in. Striking if unpleasant, the trio gets its Bay Area debut over the next three weekends at Yerba Buena Center for the Arts.

Paradise: Love (2012) makes the pursuit of pleasure look grim indeed, from the rather cheap-shot opening of Teresa (Margaret Tiesel) overseeing mentally handicapped adults as they enjoy an amusement-park outing on bumper cars — a scene whose “grotesquerie” feels exploitative. But once she’s on her holiday in sunny Kenya, it’s Teresa who does the exploiting. At the urging of a cheerfully horny friend (one among many plus-sized, German-speaking women well into middle age holidaying there), she partakes of the local populace of young men who offer gigolo-type services for a price.

But Teresa wants something more — or at least the illusion of it. Ergo she’s thoroughly suckered when the first seemingly non-predatory beach stud she encounters (Peter Kazungu as Munga) starts asking for money — he’s got no end of needy sick relatives, it seems — once they’ve consummated his declared “love.” Similar disappointments ensue. Teresa’s naiveté isn’t exactly sympathetic, however. She unconsciously brings the full weight of class/racial privilege and condescension with her, and is endlessly, petulantly demanding as a sex tourist who insists on being treated as a lover. (The negotiation around how her breasts should be touched by Munga seem to take half an hour alone.) She just wants to be desired. Yet she acts like a pushy colonialist bargain shopper.

In Paradise: Faith (2012), the spotlight is taken by Teresa’s older sister Anna Maria (Maria Hofstaetter), who most certainly is not looking for romance, let alone sex — without wearing a cowl, this hospital radiologist has become a fervent bride of Christ. She spends her vacation time alone in her over-large house, scrubbing it spotless, flogging herself clean of impure thoughts before Jesus, and singing hymns at the Casio keyboard. She also goes on daily outings to the homes of strangers, frequently immigrants. She barges in with sizable Virgin Mary statues crying “The Mother of God has come to visit you!,” and tries browbeating them into sin-abjuring prayer. Needless to say, this all seems much more about her needs than theirs.

She returns one day to the unwelcome surprise of husband Nabil (Nabil Saleh), an Egyptian Muslim back after an unexplained two-year absence. They’ve both changed greatly — back then he wasn’t yet paralyzed from the waist down, and she wasn’t a born-again fanatic. He’s nonplussed that her vinegary form of “Christian charity” treats him more as a home-nursing burden than a marital partner, and hostilities between them soon escalate to nightmarish proportions.

Ultimately, faith provides no comfort — and that failure induces a crisis of faith. Rigorously controlled in aesthetic terms, Seidl goes over the top content-wise at times — as when Anna Maria stumbles upon a public park orgy, or uses a crucifix à la Linda Blair — yet this cruel portrait of religious fixation has a certain compulsive, often cringe-inducing tension.

Finally, there’s some light at the end of the tunnel with Paradise: Hope (2013). While Teresa is fucking Africans and Anna Maria proselytizing, the former’s teenage daughter Melanie (Melanie Lenz) has been packed off to fat camp, where she and other pudgy youths endure long days of tortuous exercise and other “improving” programs. But the kids have each other; rather surprisingly, Seidl doesn’t rain gloom on their giddy rapport. Melanie also develops a serious crush on the resident doctor, a handsome, friendly, and flirtatious fellow (Michael Thomas) approximately four times her age.

Convinced she’s overdue to lose her virginity, she’s an avid pursuer — and disturbingly, he’s kinda interested. It is the movie’s major failing that seemingly kind, intelligent, grounded Dr. Arzt remains too much of an enigma for us to grasp why he’d even consider taking up a 13-year-old on the offer of herself. Yes, Melanie is cute, vivacious, and likable … but, well, come on. Of course this won’t end well. Still, Hope is indeed the most hopeful of the Paradise trilogy: its main character’s life isn’t ruined already, and she might well survive the hard knocks she’s given here to experience actual happiness.

ULRICH SEIDL’S PARADISE TRILOGY

June 13-30, $8-$10

Yerba Buena Center for the Arts

701 Mission, SF

www.ybca.org

 

Power plays

Jesse Hawthorne Ficks
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0
Power plays

arts@sfbg.com

THEATER With its storied 35-year history of politically charged and transgressive theater, Theatre Rhinoceros might seem the perfect San Francisco outfit to take on the great English playwright Caryl Churchill’s 2006 political allegory Drunk Enough to Say I Love You? — wherein the “special relationship” between the United States and Great Britain is metaphorically transformed into a sadomasochistic affair between George Bush and Tony Blair. Or rather, their more expansive stand-ins Sam (Rudy Guerrero), described as “a country,” and Jack (Sam Cohen), described as “a man.” (Jack became “Guy” in the Public Theater’s US premiere, suggesting possibly an American everyman as opposed to a specifically British one).

The premise translates into an opportunity to excavate the seductions and corruptions of power, the homoerotic relationship resonating in complex ways with a larger patriarchal order where sex and death are right on the surface and inextricably linked. Unfortunately, despite the harmonizing at the outset of this 45-minute one-act — in a double rendition of American the Beautiful and God Save the Queen — the production directed by the Rhino’s John Fisher rarely seems in tune with the material.

The staging can be amusing even when obvious, as when Sam rams home his points with robust pelvic thrusts to his partner. But it is unnecessarily busy, with multiple entrances and exits and use of a changing photographic backdrop illustrating various settings, iconic images, and bellicose themes. Of course, all of this might have been OK if the tension, sexual and otherwise, were palpably communicated. But the tension is slack, despite the mildly explicit blocking.

Instead, the actors seem to have their hands full with the challenging dialogue — which, in addition to being tightly intermingled, is non-realistic and poetically compact, deploying the argot of geopolitics as if it were the stuff of intimate cooing and romantic tussling. Sam demands “total commitment” from his lover, for instance, but Jack is a family man divided in his loyalties, and moreover has moral qualms about some of Sam’s more outré behavior, despite the carnal lust it can also arouse. It’s a rare moment when Guerrero and Cohen convincingly connect this heightened dialogue with their rambunctious interactions.

The dialogue also makes use of a litany of high crimes committed by the US government, and its ally Britain, since the Second World War — a verbal onslaught that carries its own force by virtue of its magnitude and extent, rescuing from banality the individual crimes (from Vietnam to El Salvador to Guantanamo) made too familiar by repetition. But the power that derives from the juxtaposition of a romantic affair and this index of world-rocking brutality somehow gets lost when the production attempts to act out too much of the relationship. Ironically, the more it tries to show, the less we register the true political pornography on display.

A similar disconnect attends the second half of the evening: a staging of the 10-minute play Churchill wrote in the immediate aftermath of Israel’s devastating 2008 attack on Gaza, Seven Jewish Children: A Play for Gaza, which the Rhino balances with New York playwright Deborah Margolin’s dramatic response to Churchill, Seven Palestinian Children: A Play for the Other.

As in the first play, Churchill’s Seven Jewish Children combines moral outrage with a keen formal logic, and is capable of subtleties that belie its compact and deceptively simple structure. In a series of short, regular phrases, a set of parental voices discuss what to tell a young female child about the world she has been born into. The short scenes begin in Nazi Germany and end in 2008, covering seven decades of Jewish Israeli experience. Its coruscating and certainly provocative evocations seamlessly progress from the Holocaust to the colonizing of Palestine and the repression, in turn, of its indigenous Arab population.

The staging is again probably busier than it needs to be, since the force of the rhythmic dialogue (given histrionic emphasis by Cohen and Kim Stephenson as a married couple) is somewhat dissipated when haltingly delivered across multiple scene changes and the insertion of visual and chronological cues on the screen at the back of the stage. But the short work has raised dialogue and debate internationally, and it’s long overdue for a production by a major Bay Area company. (The Rhino audience is invited to stay and discuss both plays afterward.)

Balance may be the objective in following this piece with Margolin’s Seven Palestinian Children, but there is something lopsided about it just the same. Part of the problem is that Margolin’s tit-for-tat response dulls the force of the impression left by the first play by co-opting its form and yet deploying it in a less muscular way. Indeed, Seven Palestinian Children (performed by Guerrero as a hotheaded Palestinian father and Stephenson as a more compassionate Palestinian mother) not only trades in the kinds of gendered stereotypes eschewed by Churchill’s piece but, in substituting a male child for the female one, raises an uncomfortable gender dynamic in the very representation of Israel vis-à-vis Palestine. That may be latent in the Churchill play to some extent, but in making it explicit the pairing of plays risks being more obfuscating than clarifying of the relevant issues.

DRUNK ENOUGH TO SAY I LOVE YOU?

Wed/12-Sat/15, 8pm; Sun/16, 3pm, $15-$30

Costume Shop

1117 Market, SF

www.therhino.org

 

Stretch out

Jesse Hawthorne Ficks
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3
Stretch out

culture@sfbg.com

On the Om Front The days are getting longer. The college kids who live next door are throwing parties seven nights a week instead of the usual four. Your dog is asking to be walked so early in the morning that you’re not certain you’ve ever actually gone to sleep. It’s summertime! And it’s the perfect time to get out of town for a few days, and do what yogis (and defeated armies) do best: retreat.

Yoga and meditation retreats can take many forms. They can be active and playful (think Acro Yoga on the Yuba River) or tranquil and introspective (like a silent meditation retreat in Santa Cruz). The Bay Area is a prime launch pad for a whole range of extro- and introverted magical adventures that will stretch your body and your mind into dimensions you never knew existed.

Of course the hardest part about planning a retreat or festival getaway is actually planning it. So, here’s a little help for you. Now, all you need to do is whip out your smart phone or old-school paper calendar, flag the summer days on which you’ll say a temporary sayonara to the daily grind, and book it. See you on the flip side.

 

ACRO YOGA AND YUBA RIVER

You’ve seen those brightly dressed yogis in Dolores Park on summer Sundays balancing on slack lines and doing crazy partner acrobatic tricks. Learn how to do what they do on this high-energy retreat in Nevada City, led by Jason and Chelsey Magness of the YogaSlackers. Retreat includes all-levels training in Acro Yoga and slacklining plus plenty of time on the river.

June 20-23, $400. Nevada City, CA. www.yogaslackers.com

 

AS-ONE-WE-FLOW RIVER RETREAT

This “Interdepen-dance” retreat, run by River Guidess, will blow your July 4th out of the water. It features yoga, ecstatic dance, seven miles of mellow rafting (all gear provided), deluxe camping accommodations, organic meals, and live music. The Stanislaus river is so otherworldly that you may start dreaming in an alien language. And the best part: no wetsuits required.

July 4-7, $395–$475, Oakdale, CA. www.riverguidess.com/july-4-2013/

 

YOSEMITE YOGA

The towering mountains of Yosemite are just a hop, skip, and car ride away, but we city-dwellers rarely make it over there. Toss your yoga mat and some hiking shoes into your backseat, and head for the (really big) hills with Back to Earth’s annual Yosemite Yoga trip. Each day includes guided hiking to gorgeous spots, yoga classes, Thai Massage, delicious meals, campfires, and swimming in local creeks.

July 10-July 14, $675. Yosemite, CA. www.backtoearth.org/trips/yosemite-yoga

 

WANDERLUST

This is pretty much the hottest local-ish yoga festival of the year. Featuring a panoply of talent, this Lake Tahoe event includes world-class yoga instructors (including several Bay Area teachers like Janet Stone and Pete Guinosso) and like-minded musical artists like Moby, Grammatik, DJ Drez, and The Shimmy Sisters. Oh, and jaw-dropping vistas of Lake Tahoe.

July 18-21, $125–$475. Squaw Valley, North Lake Tahoe, CA. squaw.wanderlustfestival.com

 

SECOND ANNUAL YOGA ESCAPE

If you’re down for something mellower and more introspective, this Cazadero retreat with Danae Robinett offers yoga, delicious food, and deluxe accommodation amongst redwood trees and wandering wild turkeys. You’ll also get to experience Shake Your Asana, Robinett’s unique combo of yoga and rump-shaking.

July 25-28, $650. Cazadero, CA. www.smore.com/2t0b

 

INTRODUCTION TO MINDFULNESS MEDITATION RETREAT

Looking to shift your perspective on life for more than just a weekend? Try this introductory silent meditation (and Qi Gong) retreat at the Insight Retreat Center in Santa Cruz. Silent retreats give us the opportunity to look at our thoughts and patterns so that we can start shifting them to better our lives. The insights gained on a silent retreat are well worth corking your pie hole for a few days. You may not even want to talk again when you return. Donation-based.

August 15 to 18, free ($100 refunded deposit). Santa Cruz, CA. www.insightretreatcenter.org

 

DEEP RESTORATION, DEEP HEALING: ZEN MIND, YOGA BODY RETREAT

If relaxation is on your agenda (and not the kind that requires a cocktail), head to Tassajara, a Zen Buddhist retreat center in Carmel Valley. In this retreat, teachers Samantha Ostergaard and Do-On Robert Thomas will combine Restorative Yoga (an effortless, passive yoga practice) and Zen meditation techniques to create a feeling of calm in the body and mind.

August 22-25, $240, Carmel, CA. www.sfzc.org/tassajara

 

BHAKTI FEST

Indian chanting or “kirtan” is a juicy part of yoga practice for lots of folks, and this festival is the ultimate event to get your kirtan on. Located in Joshua Tree (close to the state park, but not in it), the festival offers four days of music with bands performing on two different stages all day and night, as well as a mad plethora of yoga classes. Hot desert nights plus divine tunes equals a personal favorite of mine.

September 5-8, $200–$400 plus camping fee. Joshua Tree, CA. www.bhaktifest.com

 

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